Insanity In A Squeez Of The Hand

‘A Squeeze of the Hand’ follows ‘The Castaway’, a chapter in which Pip is abandoned by Stubb in the open sea, the latter preferring chasing the whale and then make profit than saving his fellow. What is important to underline is that in both chapters 93 and 94 deal with ‘abandonment’, ‘otherness’ in ‘fishery’ and ‘whaling’. Pip’s abandonment leads him to madness, and ‘insanity’, and as for Ishmael when he says that “a strange sort of insanity came over [him]” (l. 33) ? In Chapter 94, Ishmael reappears as an autodiegetic narrator, the chapter is clearly divided in two parts, in the first part Ishmael embarks on a detailed and comic description of a supposed painful task and duty which consists in squeezing ‘lumps of spermaceti’, then in the

“A sweet and unctuous duty! (…) Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious mollifier!” as we can see in this quote, the meliorative vocabulary used clearly emphasises the well-being of our narrator. Indeed, both Ishmael and the ship are “at ease”, “under a blue tranquil sky; the ship (…) gliding so serenely along”, Ishmael enters a sort of new world, time seems to be suspended. His senses are alert, the sense of touch “I bathed my hands”, the sense of smell “the smell of spring violets”, that colourful and varied world contrasts with Ahab’s wall vision, Ishmael opens his mind, this moment enables him to think differently. Indeed, he asserts that “[he] forgot all about our oath;”, here, Ishmael obviously refers to Ahab’s revenge against Moby Dick. This moment is for Ishmael the time to free himself from hard feelings and from his oath of anger against the Whale. It is quite a mystic scene in which Ishmael realises that he is not alone, he has to share with others, with the external world and not wall his mind and soul as Ahab does. Ahab lives under the illusion of being free, but he is not, Ishmael reach to understand that he needs others to progress, to be helped, and thus to exist as a human-being. If we look back to Chapter 93 ‘The Castaway’, we understand that isolation, abandonment is destructive, since Pip lost his soul in the sea, and becomes to act as a mad